Preface to the first edition

It was that eccentric British soldier of fortune Col. Meinertzhagen, in his Birds of Arabia, who expressed the sentiment that prefaces should be kept short because few people ever read them. Accordingly, I would like to take a brief opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who offered encouragement and assistance during the preparation of this book. I would like to thank Adele Strauss Wolbarst, Robert Cnoops, Charmaine Slack, Sophia Skiordis, Caroline Mondel, Jill Keetley-Smith, Heather Edwards, Gail Arbeter, and the Lending Library at Boston Spa, England, for help while most of this manuscript was being prepared at the University of the Witwatersrand. For general encouragement while at Pahlavi (Shiraz) University and for providing assistance during the last turbulent and chaotic

year of imperial rule in Iran, while the manuscript was being finished, I would like to thank Mark Gettner, Brian Coad, and Mumtaz Bokhari.

When photographs or drawings have been taken directly from the original material, this is indicated by stating in the legend that it is from the original work. Most of the drawings have been redrawn to suit my tastes, and these drawings are indicated by stating that the work is after the original. In some cases I have made drawings from photographs or have incorporated a number of drawings in one, in which case I state that the finished drawing is adapted from the original work or works.

I have used the metric system in this book, and the fine-structural illustrations are expressed in micrometers ( m) and nanometers (nm).

Phycology or algology is the study of the algae. The word phycology is derived from the Greek word phykos, which means “seaweed.” The term algology, described in Webster’s dictionary as the study of the algae, has fallen out of favor because it resembles the term algogenic which means “producing pain.” The algae are thallophytes (plants lacking roots, stems, and leaves) that have chlorophyll a as their primary photosynthetic pigment and lack a sterile covering of cells around the reproductive cells. This definition encompasses a number of plant forms that are not necessarily closely related, for example, the cyanobacteria which are closer in evolution to the bacteria than to the rest of the algae.

Algae most commonly occur in water, be it freshwater, marine, or brackish. However, they can also be found in almost every other environment on earth, from the algae growing in the snow of some American mountains to algae living in lichen associations on bare rocks, to unicellular algae in desert soils, to algae living in hot springs. In most habitats they function as the primary producers in the food chain, producing organic material from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Besides forming the basic food source for these food chains, they also form the oxygen necessary for the metabolism of the consumer organisms. In such cases humans rarely directly consume the algae as such, but harvest organisms higher up in the food chain (i.e., fish, crustaceans, shellfish). Some algae, particularly the reds and browns, are harvested and eaten as a vegetable, or the mucilages are extracted from the thallus for use as gelling and thickening agents.

Structure of the algal cell

There are two basic types of cells in the algae, prokaryotic and eukaryotic. Prokaryotic cells lack membrane-bounded organelles (plastids, mitochondria, nuclei, Golgi bodies, and flagella) and occur in the cyanobacteria (Fig. 2.11). The remainder of the algae are eukaryotic and have organelles.

A eukaryotic cell (Fig. 1.1) is often surrounded by a cell wall composed of polysaccharides that are partially produced and secreted by the Golgi body. The plasma membrane (plasmalemma) surrounds the remaining part of the cell; this membrane is a living structure responsible for controlling the influx and outflow of substances in the protoplasm. Locomotory organs, the flagella, propel the cell through the medium by their beating. The flagella are enclosed in the plasma membrane and have a specific number and orientation of microtubules. The nucleus, which contains the genetic material of the cell, is surrounded by a double membrane with pores in it. The contents of the nucleus are a nucleolus, chromosomes, and the background material or karyolymph. The chloroplasts have membrane sacs called thylakoids that carry out the light reactions of photosynthesis. The thylakoids are embedded in the stroma where the dark reactions of carbon fixation take place. The stroma has small 70S ribosomes, DNA, and in some cases the storage product. Chloroplasts are surrounded by the two membranes of the chloroplast envelope. Sometimes chloroplasts have a dense proteinaceous area, the pyrenoid, which is associated with storage-product formation.